Birthday Retrospective’ opens at James Library

Thursday

Jul 26, 2007 at 12:01 AMJul 26, 2007 at 12:11 PM

Bursting with energy and ideas, Hingham artist Anita Franks hardly draws a breath as she takes a visitor on a tour of her comfortable home, which is filled with the art she has created over the past decade, mostly in her fully equipped basement studio.

Portraits, prints, oils, sculptures, montages, collages, her works cover walls and tables, giving insight into a mind filled to capacity with inspiration and imagination.

Constance Gorfinkle

Bursting with energy and ideas, Hingham artist Anita Franks hardly draws a breath as she takes a visitor on a tour of her comfortable home, which is filled with the art she has created over the past decade, mostly in her fully equipped basement studio.

Portraits, prints, oils, sculptures, montages, collages, her works cover walls and tables, giving insight into a mind filled to capacity with inspiration and imagination.

Many are stacked near doorways in preparation for an exhibit Franks is having at the James Library in Norwell. “An 80th Birthday Retrospective,” she’s titled it, which comes as a surprise to her visitor, who can’t believe this fiery, outspoken lady has entered her ninth decade.

A lot of that has to do with her youthful determination, which led Franks to begin taking steps toward realizing her long-held dream of being an artist, which had been in interrupted by Vassar College, Columbia University, marriage and children.

Thus, at the age of 63, she entered the Massachusetts College of Art. About the day she graduated seven years later, Franks says, “It was the proudest of my life.”

Since then Franks has amassed a body of work that spans the great breadth of her interests. These are fueled by — among other things — memories of living in Mexico as a young child, where she was home-schooled by her German mother and fascinated by her father’s profession as a mining engineer, a job that resulted in “the family moving around as though we were in the military.”

If many of Franks’ works recall her past, such as a pretty still-life of Mexican objects, many more are inspired by current events, which she tirelessly records in sketch books sitting in front of a television screen, including a 3-by-five-foot montage that depicts the horror of 9/11.

Indeed, a good number of works in the show reveal the strong opinions she has about the turn this country took following that disastrous attack.

A great caricaturist, Franks has nailed with humorous accuracy members of the current administration who keep propelling us in that same direction, while other pieces point out with deadly seriousness: “old men start wars; young men die.”

In many of the satirical works, the American flag forms a backdrop; another omnipresent symbol is a 10-gallon hat.

If Franks possesses a caustic wit, she also can be very affectionate toward her subjects. That’s evident in the plywood cut-outs she has arranged on her front porch.

Whimsical and charming, they are representations of people she knows who go regularly to Hingham Beach, thus their self-appellation, The Hingham Beach Bums, the name Franks also has given the collection. Painted front and back, the figures are shown involved in various activities — swimming, sunning and, in one case, merely standing. Franks indicates one full-figured lady so engaged.

Says Franks about her: “I remember that woman very well. She stood there for a long time, looking at the water. But she never went in. So I called the piece ‘Thinking about Swimming.’”She and roughly 40 other of Franks’ works will be on view at the James Library.